by Teo Ballvé: Is Plan Colombia subsidizing narco-traffickers to cultivate biofuels on stolen lands?
This article appeared in the June 15, 2009 edition of The Nation.
3 military soldiers standing amid an African Palm plantation in Choco, during an armed incursion into peasant communities in 2005. Photo: Simon Bruno
Blood on the Palms
Afro-Colombians fight new plantations.
By David Bacon, Dollars & Sense, July/August 2007 | Issue 271
![Afro-Colombian families displaced by development projects, especially the expansion of oil palm plantations, and by Colombia’s paramilitary and military groups who protect the projects, have created a squatter community, the November 11 barrio, at the edge of Tumaco, a coastal city in Nariño department. The city authorities have used trash, garbage, and even medical waste to create raised pathways between the houses. Water for dozens of families comes from a single tap. [Photo credit: David Bacon.]](https://i0.wp.com/karmalised.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/bacon1.jpg?resize=300%2C200 "Photo: David Bacon")
Afro-Colombian families displaced by development projects, especially the expansion of oil palm plantations, and by Colombia’s paramilitary and military groups who protect the projects, have created a squatter community, the November 11 barrio, at the edge of Tumaco, a coastal city in Nariño department. The city authorities have used trash, garbage, and even medical waste to create raised pathways between the houses. Water for dozens of families comes from a single tap. Photo credit: David Bacon.
The paramilitaries, linked to the government of President Alvaro Uribe and to the country’s wealthy landholding elite, wanted to stop García and other activists from the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (Process of Black Communities, or PCN), who have been trying to recover land on which Afro-Colombians have lived for five centuries. The PCN is a network of over 140 organizations among Black Colombian communities.
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